


Yesterday, Tomorrow, Tonight, Always

by viiemzee



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 15:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2626184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viiemzee/pseuds/viiemzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knew that face anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday, Tomorrow, Tonight, Always

Walking into that dorm room proved that, really, you could recognize that face anywhere.

* * *

A swish of green catches your eye and you turn slowly, slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of the dress that was fluttering away from you. You try to place whether it was the girl or the dress that caught your attention, but one look at her face and you don’t really care which it was anymore.

She’s stunning, beautiful in a way you can only describe as ‘provincial’. She holds herself steady next to the towering figure of her father, and you want to become her friend instantly.

Your own father is off with your brother speaking to merchants about the newest in Egyptian silk or whatever it is that interested him today. Your mother is finding a suitor for your older sister, somebody fit to dance the night away with.

And you, you are left to your own devices, for the most part.

The champagne glass in your hand has a trickle of the stuff left in it, and you let it slide down your throat, warm and sure, before approaching the girl kindly, politely, not sure if the tug in your chest when she smiles at you and extends her hand is happiness at the prospect of friendship, or maybe something more than that.

* * *

Things fade once you’ve been Sired, but her face hasn’t.

* * *

You see her again sometime in the 1700s, looking just as young as ever, just as naive and provincial, but without a father hovering behind her this time. Maybe she’s old enough to be let out on her own this time around. Maybe she remembers you.

Your eyes lock across the crowded room and it feels like all those things you’ve been told about love, all those things you didn’t dare believe, are actually true.

She approaches you this time, a curly-haired red-head in tow, looking as if, for the life of her, she didn’t want to be here at this moment. She speaks to you, saying she feels like she knows you. You haven’t changed a bit since you saw her, but she certainly has. Her accent has changed, she’s not the same girl you fell in love with the first time, but she’s still her.

Just a different body, a different time.

* * *

Kissing her, no matter what century it’s in, is new and exciting for her, and old and reassuring for you.

* * *

It’s the 1800s and she’s surrounded by men who are trying their best to clamour around the piano she’s letting her fingers glide over.

You can’t believe your luck.

It’s almost as if, every time you lose her for fifty or so years, you find her again without even trying.

It’s not Germany, or the Duchy of Austria you were in the first time you met. It’s England, and she is so conspicuously British, and you love her all the same.

She stops playing the piano and looks up at you, catching your eye immediately, smiling politely. She doesn’t know why you’re staring – or maybe her soul, deep down, does – but that doesn’t stop you from pushing through the annoying males around her, slapping away a few hands that try to touch her, and sit next to her on the piano.

You signal to the men to leave you alone. They see the look in your eyes and know you’re serious. Gentlemen that they are, they disperse.

Gentlewomen that you both are, you converse politely over piano keys.

* * *

Every century yields its surprises. In this one, she opens up to you in a way you hadn’t expected. You feel like being so intimate with her would have felt different to men, and it did. But not in a bad way.

This way feels complete. 

* * *

It’s the turn of the century, almost. You lost her a good twenty years ago now, to a sickness that ran through her blood and ruined her young. You disappeared after that; for some reason, the pain of loss doesn’t ebb. You know you must lose her every time, that you must disappear every few years, but it doesn’t make dealing with the loss any better.

You see her again at a party. And this time she has a name very close to what she had that first time. She introduces herself as Eleanor, not Laura. You are Mircalla, the same name every century. You share champagne and chocolate. She shares stories about her travels across Europe with her over-bearing father as you sit under the stars.

You didn’t think it possible to fall in love with someone even harder than before.

She is so much more beautiful this time around.

* * *

This century, you watch her be dragged down by monsters.

This century, you vow to never let that happen again.

* * *

By some miracle, you escaped the wrath of your Magna Mater, and crossed the borders of Europe, stowed away on ships, saw the world for a good ten years, before you finally set foot in Germany again.

You were safe for now. And it was the 1900s.

Whenever you see a green dress, you falter for a moment.

But for some reason, you don’t see her for a while. 

* * *

1920 brings with it music that you really enjoy, and a fashion sense that makes you want to abandon all the clothes you’ve collected over the centuries. You’re rich – centuries of keeping an eye on currency has made you quite the efficient businesswoman – and you quickly invest yourself into the time.

You mingle with artists, those who would later become famous, in Paris, in America, in England.

It’s in Paris that you see her.

You find yourself in an argument with a certain Gertrude Stein, something about philosophy (it interests you, this need for man to understand things beyond them) when she approaches you both, seemingly floating.

You hold back a small gasp, clutching at the glass of whiskey and gulping slightly. She introduces herself, a name you’ve never heard her use before, and you quickly say your own name – Carmilla, you grew tired of Mircalla a long time ago – and she asks if you and Gertrude had been in Paris long. She’s only just moved here, she says, she needs to make friends who know the city, who can keep her company until she gets on her feet.

Gertrude nudges you so forcefully you almost stumble into her arms.

* * *

The 20s was rife with people going behind closed doors. This time, though, you weren’t one of them. Anybody who knew you knew that your ‘pretty companion’ was more than that. Nobody questioned it.

The 20s was the year you finally told her everything.

She didn’t run away from you.

Maybe you weren’t so much of a monster after all.

* * *

War time came and went and you almost lose each other. Almost.

She, for some bizarre reason, wasn’t anywhere you’d been before. She’s in Malta, a small island you’ve never been to, somewhere in Europe. You’ve been in England, escaping Mussolini’s wrath, for a few years now, but you make it to Malta on a convoy, as a nurse (they need all the help that they can get, and you have a basic knowledge of medicine) and you meet her in the streets of the capital – the bludgeoned down, war-torn capital, that would have been splendid had it not been bombed to pieces.

You meet her as she lay dying. 

You’ve had to lose her before, this is true. But never as she lay bleeding in your arms.

At least the other centuries spared you that pain.

* * *

For some reason, her soul can’t find yours for a few decades after that. The 50s are quiet. In the 60s you find yourself at Stonewall. In the 70s you’re at Woodstock.

But she’s nowhere to be found.

You start to think that, maybe, you don’t actually have a soul to find anymore.

* * *

It’s 2014 and you’ve walked into a dorm room where you hope to spend the rest of the year in quiet solitude (bar a roommate), studying and maybe finding answers to things long asked.

You walk through the door, and the face you saw 60 years ago is right there, and it takes all your energy not to kiss her right there and then.

* * *

The wait until her soul recognizes yours again is long and painful, but it’s all worth it when she finally kisses you.


End file.
